nate's 5th birthday

Nate turned five recently and we celebrated with a Totoro party.  Here’s what we threw together:

—Totoro and catbus cupcakes by Candy Clay Cupcakes.  Such beautiful and meticulous work—I was really blown away this time!

—Soot sprite truffles made with ganache and Sweet Estelle’s chocolate sprinkles and royal icing eyes.  Inspired by the ones on Tinned Tomatoes (Thank you to Sweet Estelle for sending these for Nate's party!)

—Acorns made with mini Nilla wafers, Hershey's Kisses and chocolate chips

—Green tea-flavored Pocky

—Chocorooms and chocolate horns by Meiji

—Macarons from ‘Lette Macarons

—Felt garlands from The Land of Nod

—Felt leaves from Woolhearts on Etsy

 

Happy birthday to our little Nate!

a bear called paddington

“A Bear Called Paddington didn’t begin life as a book.  The opening paragraph was simply an early-morning doodle brought on by the certain knowledge that if I didn’t put something down on the blank sheet of paper in my typewriter, nobody else would.  However, it caught my fancy, so I wrote a second paragraph, then a third, until by the end of the day I had completed a whole story.

The source of my inspiration was a toy bear sitting on the mantelpiece of our one-room flat near London’s Portobello Market.  I had bought it in desperation the previous Christmas Eve as a stocking filler for my wife, and we called him Paddington because I had always liked the sound of it, and names are important, particularly if you are a bear and don’t have very much else in the world. “

It’s so fascinating to hear when and how inspiration strikes different writers.  Sometimes it’s so elusive, and sometimes it’s right under your nose.  Our current read-aloud: A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond and pictures by Peggy Fortnum.

A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books

I was so thrilled to land a copy of A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books (which I first spotted in the lovely @bonjour_mes_amies’ Instagram feed) because it was a little hard to find.  Its contents include I Can Fly, Baby’s House, The Up and Down Book and The Golden Book of Little Verses, as well as selected pages from The New Golden Song Book.  Mary Blair is probably best known for her work for Disney, including the conceptual art for the beloved ride “It’s a Small World.”

happy 100th birthday, beverly cleary!

“Henry Huggins was in the third grade.  His hair looked like a scrubbing brush and most of his grown-up front teeth were in.  He lived with his mother and father in a square white house on Klickitat Street.  Except for having his tonsils out when he was six and breaking his arm falling out of a cherry tree when he was seven, nothing much happened to Henry.”

On January 2, 1949, Beverly Cleary wrote these memorable words—the first paragraph of her first book Henry Huggins—at the old kitchen table stored in the back bedroom in her home in Berkeley, and the rest is history.  Her peerless ability to write authentically from the perspective of children, encapsulating all of their momentous joys, fears and foibles in print, is why her books have resonated so profoundly with children, and have launched many an avid reader.

Happy 100th birthday to Beverly Cleary, and a million thank-yous would never be enough for what you’ve done for children’s literature, and more importantly, children’s lives around the world.